Page 57 - SK -1978 - Night Shift (20 short stories)

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'The sooner, the better,' Jackson said. 'How do we get in? Break a window?'

Hunton smiled, reached into his pocket, and dangled a key in front of Jackson's nose.
'Where'd you get that? Gartley?'

'No,' Hunton said. 'From a state inspector named Martin.'

'He knows what we're doing?'

'I think he suspects. He told me a funny story a couple of weeks ago.'

'About the mangler?'
'No,' Hunton said. 'About a refrigerator. Come on.'

Adelle Frawley was dead; sewed together by a patient undertaker, she lay in her coffin. Yet something of her spirit
perhaps remained in the machine, and if it did, it cried out. She would have known, could have warned them. She had
been prone to indigestion, and for this common ailment she had taken a common stomach tablet called E-Z Gel,
purchasable over the counter of any drugstore for seventy-nine cents. The side panel holds a printed warning:
People with glaucoma must not take E-Z Gel, because the active ingredient causes an aggravation of that condition.
Unfortunately, Adelle Frawley did not have that condition.
She might have remembered the day, shortly before Sherry Ouelette cut her hand, that she had dropped a full box of
E-Z Gel tablets into the mangler by accident. But she was dead, unaware that the active ingredient which soothed her
heartburn was a chemical derivative of belladonna, known quaintly in some European countries as the hand of glory.

There was a sudden ghastly burping noise in the spectral silence of the Blue Ribbon Laundry - a bat fluttered madly
for its hole in the insulation above the dryers where it had roosted, wrapping wings around its blind face.
It was a noise almost like a chuckle.

The mangler began to run with a sudden, lurching grind -belts hurrying through the darkness, cogs meeting and
meshing and grinding, heavy pulverizing rollers rotating on and on.
It was ready for them.

When Hunton pulled into the parking lot it was shortly after midnight and the moon was hidden behind a raft of
moving clouds. He jammed on the brakes and switched off the lights in the same motion; Jackson's forehead almost
slammed against the padded dash.

He switched off the ignition and the steady thump-hiss-thump became louder. 'It's the mangler,' he said slowly. 'It's the
mangler. Running by itself. In the middle of the night.'

They sat for a moment in silence, feeling the fear crawl up their legs.

Hunton said, 'All right. Let's do it.'

They got out and walked to the building, the sound of the mangler growing louder. As Hunton put the key into the
lock of the service door, he thought that the machinedid sound alive - as if it were breathing in great hot gasps and
speaking to itself in hissing, sardonic whispers.

All of a sudden I'm glad I'm with a cop,' Jackson said. He shifted the brown bag he held from one arm to the other.
Inside was a small jelly jar filled with holy water wrapped in waxed paper, and a Gideon Bible.

They stepped inside and Hunton snapped up the light switches by the door. The fluorescents flickered into cold life.
At the same instant the mangler shut off.

A membrane of steam hung over its rollers. It waited for them in its new ominous silence.
'God, it's an ugly thing,' Jackson whispered.